More than two years after 25 forestry workers were found living in squalid conditions at a camp near Golden, they have not received Employment Insurance and their former company has yet to pay them the wages they are owed.

More than two years after 25 forestry workers were found living in squalid conditions at a camp near Golden, they have not received Employment Insurance and their former company has yet to pay them the wages they are owed.

B.C.’s Employment Standards Branch has determined that the company, Khaira Enterprises, owes almost $280,000 in unpaid wages and interest to 58 former employees, but directors Khalid Bajwa and Hardilpreet Sidhu have not paid a penny of it, said Eugene Kung of the B.C. Public Interest Advocacy Centre, which represents most of the 25 workers from the camp near Golden.

The B.C. government has given the workers about half of what they are owed out of bid deposits paid to the Ministry of Forests by Khaira in 2010, when it was awarded the contract, but former employee Pasteur Nsekerabanyanka is losing hope that he will ever see the roughly $7,000 he is still owed because the company no longer exists.

Meanwhile, he and his fellow workers still struggle to service the debt they accumulated working months at a time in excruciating conditions without pay, he said.

The Employment Standards Branch decisions have all gone in the workers’ favour, but “for us poor people, it’s like we didn’t win” because they haven’t seen the money, he said.

Nsekerabanyanka came to B.C. from Quebec in March 2010 to work for Khaira and was assured he would be paid every two weeks, but it was June of that year before he saw a paycheque and that was only for $3,000, he said. Another paycheque he received the following month bounced, he said.

Nsekerabanyanka moved with the company to several forestry camps in different parts of the province, but conditions in the camp near Golden were by far the worst, he said.

Workers were regularly given spoiled food, including chicken, to eat. They had to bathe in and drink from the same glacial river, and were told to relieve themselves in the woods, Nsekerabanyanka said.

They slept in storage containers that held eight to 10 people each. Conditions inside were so stifling that some chose to sleep outdoors despite the cold and the wild animals in the area, he said.

Nsekerabanyanka returned to Quebec City on his own dime after the Ministry of Forests shut the camp down in July 2010. He tried to apply for Employment Insurance at the time, but the Khaira directors misrepresented the number of hours he worked to make it appear that he didn’t qualify, he said, despite the fact that he’d been working 10-hour days for a period of four months doing heavy manual labour.

The B.C. Public Interest Advocacy Centre took up the case and applied for Employment Insurance on behalf of the workers in late 2011. A Human Resources and Skills Development Canada spokesman would only say that the department continues to investigate the matter and cannot provide any further comment.

Back in Quebec City, Nsekerabanyanka had not been able to pay rent for two months and had to move in with friends. He also had trouble finding work because of a shoulder injury sustained on the job, but was able to use money from a successful WorkSafeBC claim to help tide him over, he said. He returned to B.C. in 2011 to plant trees near Quesnel and now lives in Surrey.

Khaira and its directors were never charged in connection with the conditions in the camp, but the company was banned from bidding on government contracts for a year.

The B.C. government also intervened with a lawsuit when Sidhu transferred his house to his wife’s name shortly after being informed by the province he could be personally liable for some of the wages owed to Khaira workers, but the case was discontinued.

Bajwa faces fraud and forgery charges, which allege that he twice knowingly used forged documents confirming completion of a fire suppression and safety course in June and July of 2010. The other two charges allege Bajwa defrauded two companies, B.C. Timber Sales and Louisiana Pacific Canada Ltd., of more than $5,000 each. None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Despite several scheduled court appearances in Revelstoke and Salmon Arm on these charges since late 2011, the case has not gone to trial. Bajwa’s next court appearance is scheduled for June 20 in Surrey provincial court.

Meanwhile, the experience has left Nsekerabanyanka, who came to Canada from a Kenyan refugee camp in 2006 and is now a proud Canadian citizen, disappointed in his new country, where he expected the rule of law to be followed.

“We were treated like slaves,” he said. “The impacts are still there on me ... (but we’ve been dealt with) like nothing happened.”

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